Community Review of Rackspace Cloud

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I’m looking for a feature, not sure if it’s readily available in Rackspace… Can we expire a video after certain period of time, meaning video still exists (not removed) in the container but needs to re-access it if it expired.

=========== Answer 1 ===========

Sounds like you’re looking for a video streaming service which has specific publication features. Cloud Files (and there’s a forum specifically for Cloud Files here as well) is just for storing files, you would have to build your own web site or web service to have that kind of feature built on top of and using Cloud Files. Try www.bitsontherun.com – they have a free tier that you might be able to make use of. (I am not affiliated with them.)

Gary

=========== Answer 2 ===========

In cyberduck, select the video

go to Get Info

Go to Distribution (CDN)

Drag bottom of requester

This reveals an Invalidate Button

Click it to “remove selected files from distribution cache)

You can upload a file of the same name if you like but there is a lag while the change propagates.

Found a fantastic article today that I thought was worth sharing. The article shows a great plugin that will help significantly speed up your WordPress installations. The plug-in is called W3 Total Cache and it uses a CDN called MAXCDN.

For $10 a year (1TB of bandwidth) Maxcdn will serve all your files for you without you having to lift a finger. MaxCDN grabs all the files itself..pretty cool no? I just signed up today and already noticed a large increase in load times for my WP site. I will report back on reliability once I’ve used the service for a bit longer.

I use CDN Tools, and it is completely transparent. Whenever you upload an image, you’ll see a note that CDN sideloading is enabled. It stores the image locally, and automatically sends it to Cloud Files. If you ever uninstall the plugin, the local files are there already, and the rollback is transparent as well.

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I still see the MaxCDN deal as better & cheaper for WP site caching. $10 for a TB of bandwidth (per year) and since you aren’t physically storing the data (Pull Zone vs Push Zone) there are no data storage fees. It’s strictly a caching service meant to serve cached files from multiple locations.

Now if I was looking to keep a secondary storage for my files or a traditional CDN to serve files of my choosing I would look to Cloud Files.

Not to mention WP Total Cache has many many more features directed specifically at making WP run faster. Whereas CDN Tools seems to really only offer the ability to serve files via a CDN.

Check out the full article link for more details. It was written by Major Hayden who is a Senior Systems Engineer at Rackspace.

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I have done 2TB of transfer with MaxCDN (in the 1.5 month) and had only one small issue.

Their support is awesome and the cost is great $.10 per GB.

Origin Pull is much better than uploading the files. All you have to do to stop using it is turn off the check box in W3Cache.

If you sign up, email MaxCDN and tell them Franklin Townes is your referral. He is the author of W3Cache.